Energy Dependence of Emission Intensity and Temperature in a LIBS Plasma Using Femtosecond Excitation

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the effect of laser energy on laser-induced breakdown emission intensity and average temperature in a short-pulse plasma generated by using 140 fs laser excitation. Both line emission and continuum background intensity and plasma temperature decrease very rapidly after excitation compared to the more conventional nanosecond pulse excitation. Both emission intensity and plasma temperature increase with increasing laser energy. However, the intensity increase appears to be mostly related to the amount of material ablated. Also, nongated laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is demonstrated using a high-pulse (1 kHz) pulse repetition rate.